


Binding Words

by Shadaras



Category: Original Work
Genre: Being a Protagonist Doesn't Mean You're Necessarily a Good Person, F/M, Feelings Realization, Friends to Enemies to Allies to Married, Magic, Political Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27810247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: The Serin line of Tamarisk has locked down mages for the last three generations. Now, after fifteen years of scheming and a decade in the royal court, Valdes Emmerson leads a coup to kill them and break their power.It's a shame that Princess Elmira Serin doesn't die, protected by magic nobody—not even she!—knew she had.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character, Princess Deprived of Her Throne/Coup Leader Who Caught Feelings
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14
Collections: Heart Attack Exchange 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kitsunerei88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunerei88/gifts).



Fifteen years of planning and pretending, and it all came down to this.

Valdes stared down at the Eldar Runestone that had been the source of his obsessions since he had learned of its existence. He’d seen diagrams in textbooks, and he’d heard awed descriptions passed down by hearsay, and in both cases the Eldar Runestone was portrayed as a great pillar rooted in Tamarisk Castle’s basement. People compared it to the myriad lesser runestones that anchored the great cities of the world, which were more accessible—those were person-sized, shaped by wind and water and lightly touched with human hands—and so the Eldar Runestone being a great pillar, the greatest example of the form, made perfect sense.

It was also, Valdes was now realising, completely false. The Eldar Runestone in front of him was a delicately-carved natural plinth glowing with inner light. To anyone with even the barest sense of magic, it would be immediately obvious that it was not just magical but innately and incredibly _powerful_. The one underneath Alkhazai University had thrummed within Valdes’ head when he’d seen it as a student; this one could shatter his pulse if he gave it a single breath of leeway.

Standing before the Eldar Runestone, Valdes wondered how anyone had found a way to tame it. He wondered how many mages had broken themselves on the fearsome intoxication of its power. It was bound, and perhaps that was the reason for both the binding and the nobility’s fear of magic; if even a mage who had trained his entire adult life for this moment was hard-pressed to resist its demands, then what of mages who had never encountered such a thing before?

Valdes contemplated it for another minute, committing the intricate runes swirling over its surface to memory, and then smashed it.

Not with magic—the runestones couldn’t be broken by the same forces which created them—but by brute labor. He’d brought a hammer into the basement long ago on some forgotten pretense, and hidden it nearby to be ready for this moment. Flakes of stone flew around him as he ruthlessly chipped away at the beautiful powerhouse, some of them cutting into his bare hands and others singing his clothes.

Normally, this would set off a hundred alarms. Valdes had spent a _year_ undoing tiny knots of power so that a sudden surge would break them. He and his allies had also killed or knocked out the guards who patrolled the basements, so that mundane methods of noticing his crime would be irrelevant as well. All that remained—the job Valdes had given wholly and solely to himself—was the runestone, and any protective mechanisms laced into it. He’d spent a long time researching the theory of how to dismantle one, yet—now that the time came—Valdes could only wrap himself in protective charms and hope.

The Eldar Runestone’s light fragmented as Valdes shattered the stone containing it. When he had entered, the light had been pure white. Now, it was a wild rainbow lashing out from the broken shards and growing more brilliant with each strike. Valdes closed his eyes to protect them, aiming with all his strength at the brightness clearly visible even through his eyelids, and struck one last time.

An explosion washed through him. Not physically—he would have died from that, and he’d known and accepted that possibility—but magically. For a moment, he was enveloped in heat, and then all the warmth left him in an instant. All that remained was a hollow ringing, like a tuning fork resonating not so much in his ears as in his magical core.

Valdes fell to the ground. He caught himself on his hands and knees, scraping and bruising them. He’d pay for that soon, he thought distantly, but those little pains didn’t matter in comparison to the ache growing beneath his diaphragm. Valdes curled around the ache, reaching in/out with his magical senses he’d spent his whole life strengthening; if the Eldar Runestone destroyed his magic from being so close to it, so be it, but he’d fight with everything he had to prevent that outcome.

That he could still use his magic for even this gave him hope, and as Valdes carefully explored he found that it wasn’t that his power had been destroyed. It was more like someone had tenderized his power, bruising it but leaving it essentially intact.

Slowly, Valdes uncurled and opened his eyes to the darkness. With a whisper of power, he sketched the first charm any mage ever learned: Light.

The rune hung in the air for a moment, and Valdes’ heart nearly stopped, before blazing so brightly it was like a tiny sun.

Valdes gaped at it. He’d not put that much power into the charm, and yet—

Had breaking the Eldar Runestone given him—or all mages?—more power, or was the rune simply consuming the runestone’s lingering might?

He would have more time later to determine the answer. For now, Valdes pushed himself upright, ignoring his protesting knees. With the remnants of the Eldar Runestone’s power, he laced a binding around his bad knee to support it through the night. It wouldn’t fix the old damage, but it meant he would be able to continue acting tonight, and he didn’t have time to waste. The contracts mages were beholden to should be shattering now, freeing them to do as they wished. He could already feel the twisting power unknotting from his ribcage, a fog he’d forgotten existed lifting from his heart.

Valdes took an unrestricted breath for the first time since he was a child.

Then he turned, his tall figure silhouetted against the blinding sun he’d conjured, and left the basement. It was time to cleanse the castle.

* * *

Elmira Serin, Crown Princess of Tamarisk, woke in the middle of the night.

She couldn’t say _what_ had woken her; there was no sound, no movement, not even the final shreds of nightmare to explain this unusual fact. Elmira lay unmoving in her bed, stretching out her senses for two parallel purposes. The first was to catalogue her bodily sensations in search of discomfort that could have woken her. The second was in case there _had_ been a brief sound or movement, and it recurred.

The second one was more important, because it was the way assassins worked. Even if none had dared breach the castle walls in the last three generations, due to the powerful wards the Eldar Runestone anchored, Elmira had been taught wariness as a habit. The reasons usually had more to do with state visits than everyday life at home, but such habits only worked when performed no matter the circumstances.

A minute later, Elmira felt—heard?—something rumble through the castle’s foundations. Even though nothing rattled about on the shelves or desk, Elmira still would have sworn that everything was shaking if she hadn’t opened her eyes and confirmed that nothing was moving. She still felt dizzy, her chest tight and stomach roiling. She didn’t think it was poison, or even an unpleasant reaction to dinner; those both felt more focused on one part of her body than whatever this was.

Elmira clutched her opal pendant in hopes of steadying herself. It was cold against her fingers, and that was more upsetting than anything else. She’d had it for as long as she could remember, and it had always rested against her breastbone, emitting a faint warmth. A protection charm was woven into it, her father had told her, when she was eight and curious about why she couldn’t remove it even when bathing. She’d accepted that explanation then, but as she’d grown older Elmira had wondered how much of the truth he’d been telling.

The pendant’s chill had to mean its protective powers—along with whatever else might have been woven into it—had been used up or negated. Elmira took a deep breath to steady herself and ran through the facts at hand:

She’d been woken up by _something_ , which Elmira now suspected had been either the pendant’s temperature fading or the cause of its failure. Whatever that _something_ was had probably caused the shaking effect, too; whether it was an aftershock or the main goal was immaterial. Either way, someone was assaulting the castle with a powerful spell, and the correct thing to do—drilled into her with lessons as soon as she could walk and understand such concepts—was to find a safe escape route.

Easier done at home than anywhere else, Elmira thought grimly. They’d planned for this, after all, in the paranoid way of a family who had successfully held the throne for generations. Quietly, she got out of bed. She didn’t dare light a candle. Fortunately, she knew where her dresser was, and the kind of clothing one wore to run and hide didn’t require any fancy lacing or endless layers; she could dress herself without worrying about calling a maid and causing a fuss.

Elmira worked quickly. She’d hated how paranoid her family was as she’d grown up, but now it seemed that at least one of her father’s—or grandfather’s—enemies had finally found a way to strike at them. In this moment, she blessed that paranoia, because it was keeping her safe.

It was a matter of minutes before she was fully dressed. She slung a bag of spare clothes and coin over her shoulder and pressed the knots in her wooden dresser in a particular order, praying that whatever magical disturbance had occurred hadn’t undone the links to the secret exit.

The wall groaned as stone slid against stone, and a wash of relief sank into Elmira’s bones. It worked. She’d have a chance.

Elmira had stopped worrying about whether or not her instincts were right. If they were wrong, then a guard should have been stationed outside her room, with keen enough ears to be able to hear the passage open. She’d heard nothing outside—no calls to check on her, no footsteps nearing or doors opening—and the best-case scenario was a guard who had simply fallen asleep on duty. Elmira doubted that was the reason, and none of the other possibilities were good.

It took thirty nerve-wracking seconds for the passage to open, and Elmira spent all those seconds glancing back and forth between the door she was opening and the door to her room.

Nothing changed. Nothing sounded.

A faint buzz rose on her skin, and Elmira shivered beneath her winter cloak. It was warmer than she needed inside, but if things were going as badly as her gut said, she would need it. Autumn held no promises of warmth, after all.

The passage opened, and Elmira darted through, stumbling in the darkness. In her memory, the tunnel had been lit by faint magelights cast in crystal. Now there was nothing. Elmira scraped her hands along the wall, trying to find a balance between moving quickly and moving safely. Her footsteps echoed along the cold stone either way, a stuttering counterpoint to her blood beating in her ears.

She couldn’t track how long it took to move through the passage. All she could tell was that it was longer than in her years-old memory.

A light appeared in front of her, and Elmira sped up. Maybe the power that had damaged the lights hadn’t extended to the exit itself. She hoped that was the case; if it wasn’t, then she was walking straight into a trap. Still, when behind her was the castle she knew was dangerous, at least this way she had a chance.

Elmira tried to steady her breath, but just as she drew close enough to see the door, a figure stepped in front of the light.

She knew that person. She’d seen him most days for the last decade; he’d come to the castle’s service straight from graduation. Alkhazai University had recommended him heartily for his talent and exemplary understanding.

Valdes Emmerson stood in front of her, a smile on his handsome face. “Princess,” he said, and his voice was still as deep and warm as the day he’d bowed over her hand and sealed himself in her teenage dreams. “I had wondered where you’d run off to.”

“Emmerson.” Elmira stood her ground, staring at his shadowed features. The light haloed his long hair, caught on the faint stubble of his cheeks, and didn’t reach his eyes. “What happened?”

“The Eldar Runestone broke.” Valdes shook his head slightly. His hands came to rest on the emerald-topped cane he used as both a channel for magic and a support. “I’d been telling your father it was unwise to have everything bound to its power.”

Elmira bit her lip. She remembered those arguments; most of them hadn’t been about the Runestone itself so much as Valdes’ desire to use his power more actively. “Why are you here?” she asked instead. “You sleep inside the castle.”

“Why are you awake?” Valdes asked. Light bloomed from his cane, finally allowing Elmira to read his expression. His eyes were colder than she expected, but his question seemed genuine enough.

“I don’t know.” Elmira wrapped the cloak around herself. She couldn’t take her eyes off his glowing cane. It spun idly, light glistening and sparking off the emerald’s many facets. “I just woke up.” She swallowed, and added, “I think my necklace woke me up when its protective charms ended.” Elmira pressed a hand to her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that. As much as she liked Valdes, as charming as he could be, she hadn’t thought he’d known about this passage. It was for those of royal blood, not a commonborn mage.

Valdes’ eyes narrowed. “Whoever wrought that necklace did a remarkable job.” He raised his cane and traced a circle in the air between them. The light’s afterglow formed into runes Elmira couldn’t read, didn’t know the meaning of, but every instinct in her body screamed at her to run.

She made it three steps back down the corridor that no longer seemed like an escape before the spell hit her.

The last thing Elmira remembered was light blazing around and through her body.

* * *

“Why is the Princess still alive?” Yven snapped as soon as Valdes walked into the meeting room. He was, as ever, leaning against the wall instead of sitting in a chair. His arms were crossed over a plain brown doublet embroidered with gold-and-green floral patterns, and a scowl marred the perfection of his dark face. “I thought the whole _point_ was to end the bloodline.”

“Good morning to you too.” Valdes rubbed his head. He hadn’t slept for the last day. After tracking down the princess in question and capturing her—he had _meant_ to kill her, as he had the rest of the royal family—he’d spent the rest of the too-short night inscribing runes of binding and impenetrability in one of the formal guest rooms to use as a make-shift prison. That he could still think was a testament to both his skill and his stubbornness. “Her own magic woke up.”

The whole room—a half-dozen mages and another dozen lesser nobles who had supported them—stared at him.

Valdes smiled dryly at them. With the help of his cane, he made it to a chair and sat down, stretching his left leg out with a sigh. It usually wasn’t a problem unless he overdid things, but everything about the last twenty-four hours certainly counted as _overdoing things_. He hadn’t had a choice, though; out of the entire alliance, he had been the only one with access to the Eldar Runestone.

Once he was a little more settled, Valdes started talking again. “Magic might normally awaken in childhood, but we’ve certainly seen instances of it awakening later in life. Princess Elmira being twenty-three does not rule out a spontaneous emergence of her powers.”

Lord Blythe, who was the oldest noble on their side, knocked on the table and cut in. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Yven, on the other hand, narrowed his eyes at Valdes. “Val,” he said, very softly, “are you suggesting that this _wasn’t_ a spontaneous emergence?”

“Princess Elmira always wore a necklace woven with protective charms strong enough that I could never get a proper read on what they were for.” Valdes looked calmly around the room. All the mages clearly understood what he was implying by now, but the nobles mostly looked bored. “I believe its spells ended when I broke the Eldar Runestone. Furthermore, I believe that its true purpose wasn’t protecting Elmira from outside harm. It was locking Elmira’s magic away from notice.”

Valdes calmly poured himself tea as the room exploded into shouts around him.

It had taken over a decade to build this alliance. He really hoped that his choice wouldn’t bring it crashing down around them.


	2. Chapter 2

Elmira glared at the door.

There wasn’t much else she could do, to be honest; it had been a week since Valdes Emmerson had knocked her unconscious with magic and dumped her in this room. She hadn’t been harmed in any way, save the scrapes on her hands and knees she was pretty sure just came from falling to the ground. However, she also hadn’t been allowed out of these rooms.

A trembling servant brought her food thrice a day, under the guard of an expressionless mage. Any waste that needed removal was taken at those times as well, generally while the mage stood silently in the door and Elmira tried—unsuccessfully—to learn _anything_ about what had happened.

He’d spoken to her once, on the first day when the servant brought dinner. “You’re very lucky,” he’d said, and the frustrated snarl in his lips made her believe him. “Valdes is interested in you.”

“ _Interested_?” Elmira had repeated, unease seeping into her skin.

He’d snorted. “Not in your body, Princess, don’t worry about that.”

“Why is he interested?” Elmira had demanded. When he’d just stared coldly at her, she’d tried asking “What’s your name?” instead. And then, desperately, as the maid finished her duties. “Why am I locked up here?”

“It’s not worth telling you any of that right now.” The mage had turned and shut the door. The runes on it glowed with power, and Elmira knew—from hours of trial—that shouting or beating upon it would have no effect.

The next morning, she’d been given paper, pens, and inks. She’d asked for books, for her embroidery projects, for anything else that could occupy her hands, and received nothing but that stony silent sneer in return.

Elmira was good at writing; her tutors had always commented on how fine her hand was, and encouraged her efforts at calligraphy. She was not, however, good at writing to entertain herself. She could copy texts, write flowing letters, produce elegant invitations to social events, but when given a blank page and told to write about anything she liked, Elmira could never think of anything. When given such assignments, she always turned to simply describing the room, or an outfit, or something else concrete. While perfectly serviceable text for an assignment, it wasn’t _enjoyable_.

The door opened, which was what Elmira had been waiting for. Before even the maid—always in front; Elmira suspected the mage believed her less likely to harm her than him—came into view, Elmira started talking. “I have been here for _seven days_ and you have told me _nothing_ ,” she snapped. “That is _enough_.”

“You’re quite right,” a frustratingly familiar voice agreed. Valdes entered, the maid trailing behind him in an even more mouse-like way than usual. Elmira intensified her glare, but Valdes only smiled. He had always been attractive, with the sharp lines of his face and his clever eyes. Right now, he looked more disheveled than usual; his silver-shot hair was only loosely tied back instead of in a perfect queue, and shadows weighed down his eyes. “Good afternoon, Princess.”

Elmira crossed her arms and did not give him even the semblance of a polite greeting. “Explain this to me, Emmerson.”

Valdes shrugged slightly and fully entered the room, closing the door behind him. He glanced at her in a parody of permission, mouth quirking up in the ghost of a smile, then chose one of the empty chairs in the sitting room for himself. Elmira didn’t deny him that courtesy, much as she wished she could. “I’ve spent this last week convincing everyone else that killing you would be a mistake,” he said calmly. “For some reason, the coalition isn’t kindly disposed towards your bloodline at the moment.”

She’d known, rationally, that it was unlikely her parents were still alive. But hearing it implied by a voice she’d grown to trust during the decade Valdes had spent at court… Elmira’s fingers wrapped around the back of the chair in front of her, knuckles pale and taut. “What did you _do_?” she asked, using every bit of her training to keep her voice steady and her eyes dry.

“I freed my people.” Valdes’ slight smile didn’t falter. “I acted with the will of those who believed a new dynasty would be kinder to them than your family’s ever had been.”

“ _Details_ , Emmerson.” Elmira’s heart hammered in her chest. She leaned forward, not trusting her feet to carry her closer. “I know you have them. Stop protecting me. My family did that more than enough.”

Valdes’ throat worked, and his eyes finally dropped down. _Good_ , Elmira thought fiercely. He had _some_ emotions, still. Then Valdes said, voice just as hard and emotionless as her father’s always had been when ordering his generals to war, “I broke the Eldar Runestone. My cohort—the other mages in our group—subdued the guards and retinues. I came upstairs and killed your father, mother, uncle, and brothers.” He raised his face to hers. “I meant to kill you, but the spells didn’t take. You caused us _quite_ the trouble, my lady.”

It should sound mocking, Elmira thought distantly. To be called _my lady_ by the person who freely admitted to having killed the rest of her family and intending to kill her. Yet his voice had turned wry, as if it were a joke they shared. “You could have killed me in the tunnel,” Elmira said, instead of screaming at him or breaking down crying. She could feel those emotions, vast storms inside her chest and throat, and held them back because she didn’t know when she would have another chance for information. “Why didn’t you?”

“I tried to.” He tilted his head, and the emerald studs in his earlobes flashed at her. “Do you want to know why you’re alive, Princess?”

She nodded, too trapped by emotion and his velvet voice to speak.

“You have magic of your own, and it manifested—I suspect instinctively, and for the first time—to save your life.” Valdes tapped meditatively on the emerald knob of his cane. “Did you know you had magic?”

“No.” Elmira shook her head, denying his suggestion and his question both. “The royal line has never— That’s _why_ we rule, isn’t it?”

“There’s a first time for everything, my lady.” Valdes pushed himself to his feet. He gave her that half-smile again, charming and frustrating in equal measure. “And you don’t rule anymore. That _was_ the point of this whole exercise, after all.”

Elmira kept her eyes fixed on Valdes’ face. She didn’t think she’d manage anything if she looked away, not at this point. “You can’t have done it alone.” Her voice sounded distant, even to her. “Who aided you, Emmerson?”

“Does it truly matter?” He sighed, leaning on his cane. “Perhaps if you have a reason to wonder that isn’t simply asking _Whom must I punish?_ , I will consider telling you.”

“What’s the name of the mage who came before?” Elmira asked, then, because she needed _something_. Her hands ached, and the muscles in her legs seemed locked tight. “He wouldn’t tell me anything.”

Valdes shook his head, and his black hair swirled around his shoulders. “Yven is stubborn. Telling you his name will not harm him.”

The name sounded familiar. Elmira thought about it, as best she could, steadily working through her memory for long enough that Valdes bowed and was almost out the door. It had almost closed behind him when she said, “He was your classmate, wasn’t he? You told me stories about pranks you’d played together.”

Valdes paused, most of the way out the door. Still with his back to her, he said, “We were much younger then, Princess. Those carefree days are long gone.”

Then the door closed, leaving Elmira once more in silent solitude.

It took five minutes—spent cursing at him, at the world, at her family’s legacy—before she broke down, sobbing, on the bed.

* * *

Valdes waited a day before returning.

During that day, he ignored Yven’s muttering about how “that girl” hadn’t eaten anything, and if Valdes wanted to _use her_ somehow then he had to take better care of her. For someone who protested that he didn’t care about the Princess and was only watching her to make sure she didn’t do anything threatening, he was certainly more upset than Valdes expected by this turn of events.

To be fair, Valdes was equally frustrated; he was just too busy to bicker about it. Lord Blythe and his coterie of nobles had set up a council, and Valdes had turned it into a stalemate about who would take the crown. Mostly the stalemate was over whether Lord Blythe, as the accepted head of the noble faction, would take over, or if Valdes would force his way into the rulership role.

Before the coup, Valdes had thought they’d agreed on this point. Valdes, as the only mage with enough experience and interest in politics to care, would take the crown, and Lord Blythe would be his primary advisor. They’d had it all worked out, and everyone had seemed amiable. Valdes suspected this aggravating argument—almost a coup within a coup—was because they’d seen the power he could unleash and were scared of it.

 _They should be scared_ , Valdes thought viciously as he stalked towards Elmira’s room. _If they knew the restraint it took for me not to call lightning onto them—_

But he wouldn’t. And even if he did, it would be more to terrify them than to torture them, unless his life was truly in danger. The slaughter of Tamarisk Castle did not need to be repeated without extenuating circumstances. He hoped that he wouldn’t be driven to those circumstances; even though he _could_ stop another dozen hearts if he had to, he didn’t _want_ to. It took more energy than he could reasonably call upon anytime soon without endangering himself, especially now that he wasn’t channeling the ambient energy the Eldar Runestone had left in the vicinity upon breaking.

Valdes leaned against the wall outside Elmira’s room, willing himself to calm. There was little point in threatening her; they both knew that if he’d truly wanted her dead, there were a hundred ways he could have accomplished that by now. He’d given her the information she’d wanted, or at least the most relevant facts, yesterday; today she would be asking more about why she was still alive, unless he’d completely misjudged her.

Or unless grief took her in a different way than Valdes assumed it would. Some people broke entirely, for such long periods of time that it baffled Valdes. Some turned angry. Some locked it all away, frozen and so calm they forgot they weren’t rational. And some—the way Valdes thought, hoped, that Elmira would—let it all crash over them and found new ground to stand upon. No better or worse than before, but _steady_ in a way that few other forms of grief allowed so easily and early.

Regardless, Valdes needed to be calm himself, not burning with frustration, or else Elmira would find something to turn back on him.

He waited two minutes, running through old meditation exercises that he knew as well as his own name, until his heart was slow and steady. Only then did Valdes knock on Elmira’s door and wait for her response. He deliberately hadn’t come at noontide, instead waiting until early afternoon. Even before the ridiculous meeting—shouting match—had run longer than expected, this had been the plan.

Valdes wanted to see her when there wasn’t anything to distract them, not even the well-trained servants. He also, as much as he disliked admitting it, didn’t want Yven to know exactly when he was arriving. That man was entirely too good at spying.

“Who is it?” Elmira called from inside.

“Valdes Emmerson.” Valdes stepped slightly back from the door. He’d unlocked it alongside his knock, in case Elmira came to open the door. “May I speak with you?”

Silence, for long enough that Valdes worried she might actually say no. Then, so faint it barely came through the thick wood, “You may as well.”

Valdes took that for the invitation it had to be and entered the room. It didn’t look much different than yesterday. Elmira was sitting in a soft chair instead of standing behind a rigid one, and she looked exhausted in a way she hadn’t before, but her expression was guarded and her eyes intent. Automatically, because a week wasn’t nearly long enough to forget the habits of a decade, Valdes bowed. “My lady.”

“Didn’t you take over the castle?” Elmira shook her head, golden coils of hair trembling around her shoulders. “What do you want, Emmerson?”

He sat down, because it was always easier to sit than stand, and people often underestimated him when he was sitting. “Mostly I want a break,” Valdes admitted, which was true but not what he’d expected to start with. “But I’ll settle for a conversation that isn’t a shouting match.”

To his surprise, Elmira let out a snort of suppressed laughter. “Are you _in charge_ now?” she asked, eyes lit up with delight. “It’s not nearly as much fun as you’d think, is it?”

“I don’t believe I ever thought it would be _fun_ ,” he said dryly. For some reason this also brought a spurt of laughter. Valdes squinted at Elmira; there was no way this was actually that funny. “I was thinking about the ways I could change things, and that’s always hard work.”

“Well,” Elmira said, “so long as nobody comes back to overthrow you in my name—” She paused, narrowed her eyes. “ _Does_ anyone know I’m alive?”

“I’m reasonably certain nobody’s let that slip.” Valdes wasn’t in charge of spreading the news of their coup and didn’t want to be. Leave that to people who liked dressing up events in dramatic words and couching the truth in clever disguises to allow more people to accept it. However, leaving that to someone else did mean that he couldn’t say for sure what information had been concealed. “I’m confident that if the populace knew we were holding onto the Princess someone would have charged the castle demanding your release by now.”

Elmira nodded slowly. “If you let people know, things will get… messy.”

“I’m aware.” Valdes rubbed his temple. He didn’t want another headache. He couldn’t spell them away, and there was never time to retreat and rest until they went away properly. “I also came here to talk about magic.”

Elmira’s face hardened, and she sat up straighter. “You said I had some.”

“You do.” Valdes had watched his magic wrap around her and crash into a well of power he’d never expected to see. It hadn’t been her charmed necklace—the power of enchanted objects presented less dramatically—and it had ripped through his runes like they were nothing. He might not teach, or even wander, but Valdes had still seen enough awakenings to know what one looked like when he saw it. “It’s not something we can mistake.”

“I was given to understand that magic manifested in childhood.” Elmira tilted her head, and a coil of blonde hair fell to frame her face. “Explain.”

Valdes leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. Elmira had always been very good at making eye contact right up until the person she was staring at broke. “I think that the necklace you wore bound your magic. Or it was powered by it. I don’t know; it’s broken and the spell is long gone. All that remains is the evidence of your own power. And yes, magic usually manifests in childhood, but while uncommon it isn’t unheard of for magic to arise in youths.”

“I’m barely a youth, as my father loves—loved to remind me.” Elmira’s voice caught and broke, and Valdes did not look. He had seen enough on her face yesterday to know how hard it was to avoid wanting to comfort her in her sorrow. “But if—if I have magic, then that would explain why he kept finding fault with my suitors. It was never with them. It was with _me_.”

Elmira’s chair scraped across the floor slightly as she stood in a rustle of cloth. Valdes kept his eyes closed, face tilted up to the ceiling. He did not want to know what Elmira was doing. It might be dangerous, but if Elmira managed to call upon enough power to kill him, then he deserved to die. Protection spells wrapped around Valdes’ cane, and the lining of his clothes had been embroidered with runes of safety and well-being. It might not protect him from headaches, but it could certainly prevent an untrained mage from visiting harm upon him.

“Emmerson,” Elmira said softly, right in front of him.

Unwillingly, he opened his eyes. She was leaning over him, hands braced on the arms of his chair. He might be taller than she was, might wield more power than she could, but right now with her autumn-bright eyes staring into his, none of that mattered. All that mattered was that Elmira’s confidence overrode any protests he might have about her position. “Princess,” he said, voice rasping out of his throat.

“You will teach me.”

“Yes,” Valdes said. There wasn’t any way he could deny that. He’d already wanted to. Now, with the slow bloom of her smile that only mostly reached her honey-gold eyes, he was even more certain of it. “Of course I will, my lady.”

“Good.” Elmira straightened and took a step back. “We begin now.”


	3. Chapter 3

Elmira carefully drew a rune onto the sheet of paper, murmuring its name along with her strokes. Valdes’ teaching style wouldn’t work for children, she was certain, but leaving her with a book, a lot of paper, and some cautions was perfectly acceptable.

Apparently, learning how to actively draw upon one’s magic and place it into the runes happened _after_ learning to shape them. Valdes said he’d been taught by drawing first in sand and then with chalk, refining the shapes as he went. Valdes had smiled, sun-bright, when he’d told her that she should be able to go straight to ink. More challenging, he’d said, but she already knew how to copy precise forms and correct her own errors.

Elmira had been working her way through the book for the last few weeks, mastering a rune or two a day. Valdes had stressed the importance of understanding not simply the visual form but the motions it took to shape them. She’d seen him form runes out of light with the power of his mind before, and understood the connection between this training and that skill immediately. So even though it was boring and she wanted to move faster through the runes, she methodically moved through each rune in turn.

The book started with simple runes that Elmira suspected were the least dangerous— _rhi_ , for light; _irvi_ , for protection from physical harm; _teo_ , for cleansing the surface of an object—and then scaled up in complexity and potential danger as the book continued. Elmira was working on _pele_ , heat (which she’d noticed conjugated to _pelwar_ , fire, a dozen runes later), when Valdes entered her rooms without even knocking.

He’d been getting freer with her over the month she’d been stuck here. She didn’t precisely mind, since he was the only one of her captors who took the time to actually talk to her, but she wasn’t sure where it was going. “Emmerson,” she said, in lieu of a proper greeting.

“My lady.” His cane clicked on the floor. It was heavy today, and Elmira bit back a sigh. Valdes had never been good at moderation, but since this coup he’d been even worse. “Your studies are progressing nicely.”

“Do I need to master the whole book before you’ll teach me the next step?” Elmira turned and smiled at Valdes. His dark hair—streaked with silver for as long as she’d known him—was loose today, falling around his shoulders in almost-tangled waves. “Or is there another reason you’re here?”

“If you don’t master the full set, then you can’t learn any more until you master the next step.” Valdes leaned against the desk, taking weight off his bad leg. “Things go poorly if you learn both steps at once.”

Elmira clucked her tongue and pointed at the soft armchair she thought of as his. “Sit down before you hurt yourself.”

He laughed softly and did so. “What do you think, my lady?”

She looked at his expression, at the tension wrought into the corners of his eyes and the way his smiles seemed forced, and said, “Do you need me to?”

“It would make things easier,” he admitted with a sigh. “They’re asking about why I’m keeping you around at all.”

Elmira rolled her eyes and straightened her desk. She could feel Valdes’ eyes on her, calm and deeply powerful. He said it like this was news, but Elmira had heard that question from the first day she’d woken up imprisoned here. It had been in Yven’s voice, in her own head, and she suspected everywhere _except_ Valdes’ own heart. “What answer did you give them?”

“I want to understand what mechanism hid your power.”

“They must be tired of that answer by now.” Elmira turned to scowl at Valdes. He was clearly very intelligent, and in the past he’d shown his ability to make quick and accurate judgements. Why was he so incapable of understanding people’s concerns about this specific point? “Emmerson, so long as I’m alive I’m a threat.”

Valdes shook his head. “You haven’t made any attempt to escape. I don’t think you’re going to.”

“Why do you trust me?” Elmira asked, exasperated. “I know why you trusted me before you enacted this plot, but why trust me _now_? True, I haven’t tried to escape, but maybe I’m just waiting for you to teach me magic so that I can fight my way out more effectively. Have you thought about that option?”

He _smiled_ at her, and it didn’t look faked at all. “If you wanted to escape, you wouldn’t give me advice when I asked for it.”

Elmira bit the inside of her cheek, an old bad habit. Valdes wasn’t _wrong_ , but she also hadn’t meant to start giving him advice. He’d just complained to her about the power struggles of his coup committee (as she’d started calling it), and eventually she hadn’t been able to keep quiet. She’d been _trained_ for leadership in a way none of them—not even the petty nobles—had. After that, Valdes had started asking her for advice, and Elmira had given it to him.

At first, she’d justified her choice to herself by saying it was a way of keeping herself safe. Then she’d told herself that she was helping him because it was more interesting than not telling him anything. Sometimes, she pretended it was just about returning the favor he was doing her by teaching her magic. But in the end, none of those were the whole truth.

The deepest reason, which Elmira usually only acknowledged when frustrated or very tired, was that Elmira _liked_ Valdes, and not even the knowledge that he’d killed her family had managed to break her fondness for him. She hated that, hated the twisting feeling in her stomach when she looked at him and remembered that his hands had broken everything she’d known and could have killed her too.

And yet, when Valdes looked at her with a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, Elmira still wanted to smile back. When his fingers trailed through the air, she wondered if they would be as graceful on her body as they were drawing runes. When he complained about politics, she wanted to fix his problems even though he had created every single one of them himself—and they had all come at the expense of her own life.

Elmira shoved down the twisting guilt that tangled through all those thoughts, tucked her hair behind her ears (it rarely stayed there for long if she didn’t pin it heavily, and she didn’t usually bother with that in private) and said, “Were you going to teach me how to use runes?”

“Very well.” Valdes leaned forward and raised his cane, tracing a shape Elmira had become very familiar with into the air. _Rhi_. A loose spiral inwards, a line connecting the shape’s beginning and end. As Valdes traced it, deep green light trailed behind his cane. When the rune was complete, it began to glow a warm gold; not so bright it would hurt the eyes, but clearly shedding light. “The basic theory is that you pull energy from your core and feed it into the rune. That rune takes your energy and creates the desired effect.

“It’s never that simple, of course. Take _rhi_. My intent defines the color and intensity of the effect. If I just want _light_ , I’ll get blinding white light.” Valdes shook his head, laughter hiding in his voice. “It’s the most common error initiates make. It’s also why we teach _rhi_ first; it’s very easy to screw up but rarely damaging when you do.”

Elmira frowned. “Nothing in the books you gave me talks about a core.” The element of intent made sense; just like embroidery or calligraphy, going into your work with intent made everything that followed much simpler. “What is that?”

“Of course they didn’t; I gave you books on runes, not channeling.” Valdes tapped the _rhi_ hovering in the air and it dissipated. “I didn’t want to risk it.”

“If you’re teaching me channeling now, will you give me some?”

“If I have any at your level, I will.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “The core. Magic doesn’t live in precisely the same place in everyone, and different people describe it feeling in different ways. For me, it lives behind my diaphragm, and it’s warmth and pressure that I draw from and refine. For one of my mentors, it was more like a light in her gut. I’ve heard it discussed as a well, or a spring, or a fire. All that’s consistent is that it’s inside you, and it’s something you can draw power from.”

With every word that came from Valdes’ mouth, Elmira’s frustration built. At the end, she snapped, “Then how do any of you learn it?”

“Trial and error.” Valdes shrugged. “There are common areas, and common images, and we’re left to experiment until we make something happen.”

“That’s a _terrible_ strategy.”

“When most of your students are barely pubescent, there is a limit to the focus teachers expect from them,” Valdes said dryly.

Elmira crossed her arms. “Give me a list and I’ll try _experimenting_.” She did her best to put as much scorn as she could into the words. “Or you can tell me something more useful.”

Valdes leaned back and closed his eyes as he drew his cane across his lap. It rested there, quiet under his fingers, as he thought. When Elmira had almost had enough of his silence, Valdes spoke in a soft but resonating voice. “Where does your energy rest? When you’re happy, or excited, where does that thrill live?”

Elmira thoughtlessly reached up to touch her collarbones, where the opal necklace still rested. Even though Valdes had long since said it no longer had any magical power, it was still a comfort to her. But, more than that, the hollow space where her collarbones met at the base of her throat was where those emotions lay.

“Usually, our power resides in that same space.” Valdes pressed a hand against his chest. His long fingers were pale against dark blue fabric, elegant and graceful in a way that Elmira wished they weren’t. “The trick isn’t usually finding the source of power, anyway; it’s about learning how to _harness_ it. How to move it from within to without. Imbuing it in ink helps make it physical, and from there it’s easier to move to immaterial or more slowly formed signs—embroidery, for instance, or enchantments like those set into your necklace.”

Silence fell, and it took Elmira some time to realise that Valdes was waiting for her to respond. “I think I understand,” she said, even though that felt inadequate. She wasn’t sure what there was _to_ understand yet, she suspected, but at least this speech made sense to her.

“Try it out on your own time, then.” Valdes’ eyes slid open. “I should go. Unless you want to help untangle yet another idiotic debate—?”

Elmira knew she shouldn’t. There was nothing in it for her, beyond the hope in Valdes’ voice and the knowledge that even if she was about to struggle with magical tasks, _this_ was something she could do. “Tell me about it,” Elmira said, before she could talk herself out of what had somehow become the highlight of her days.

Valdes smiled at her, open and honest in a way that broke Elmira’s heart wide open with painful light, and did.

* * *

“This _cannot_ continue, Emmerson.” Lord Blythe slammed his hand down onto the table. “Elmira Serin is a risk we cannot condone.”

Valdes laced his fingers over the top of his cane. They’d had this argument a hundred times already, it felt like. “Has anything meaningfully changed since last time we talked about this?”

Lord Blythe glared at him. “Time continues to pass, Emmerson, and you cannot keep her hidden forever.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“You should marry her or kill her.” Lord Blythe stood up and turned to leave. “I’d prefer the latter, but the former allows us to control her. And if you don’t… Well, don’t blame me for the consequences.”

Valdes couldn’t find any words. He couldn’t even move. Nobody else spoke as Lord Blythe left, but they all took this as the end to yet another disastrous meeting and left in their own quietly chatting groups. Even Yven, usually sympathetic to Valdes, only gave him a half-hearted smile before trailing out with the rest of the group.

 _Marry Elmira?_ Valdes shook his head, not so much in denial of the idea as confused by it. She might have known she was consigned to a political marriage since childhood, but—

Valdes closed his eyes, lips tightening. He’d never thought about any kind of marriage, because mages were not— _had_ not been, the laws were going to change now—allowed to marry at all. Sometimes they were allowed to bear or father children to increase the likelihood of another generation of well-trained and well-restrained magic-users, but mostly they lived with the knowledge that indiscretion of any sort would simply lead to their death.

Lord Blythe’s words might have been a parting barb, a throwaway line meant in derisive jest more than anything else, but Valdes was thinking about it now. If marriage was an option, then that _would_ solve some problems. Valdes breathed out slowly, trying to calm his racing heart and cool the heat building in his chest and spreading down to his palms. Whether or not he liked Elmira was… not precisely immaterial, but less relevant than whether this was _allowed_.

(He liked her. He might even love her, if he let himself think about it, which he didn’t. He’d met her as a newly-graduated twenty-year-old and still wasn’t sure exactly when in the decade that had passed she’d turned into a beautiful young woman instead of the sweet girl with too-serious eyes he’d first met. She’d grown into those eyes, and into the effortlessly upright and regal posture she’d already had even then.)

Valdes shoved himself abruptly to his feet, catching his balance on the table before carefully striding down the halls. This wasn’t a decision he could make on his own. His feet and cane clicked counterpoint to his still-speeding heart. But if he could ask, if Elmira would consider it—

He stood outside her door for a long minute before opening it. Usually he tried to remember to knock, but he couldn’t be bothered right now.

Elmira stood in the middle of her room, one hand raised to the air with a shimmer of golden light trailing after it. Valdes stopped dead in the doorway, transfixed. Elmira was breathtaking like this, clever and gorgeous in equal measure. It had only been a week ago that he’d explained the basic concepts of magic to her, and she was already tracing runes into the air.

The light dissipated as she looked at him. “Emmerson?” she asked, worry creasing her brows. “What happened this time?”

Valdes stepped forward and shut the door. He didn’t want anyone to overhear this. “I’ve been given an ultimatum about you. I cannot tell if I was meant to take this seriously, but—” he swallowed, and hoped his tongue wouldn’t fumble the words “—other than death, the option proposed was that I marry you.”

Elmira stared at him.

She did that a lot, if Valdes was being honest. Sometimes he could read her expressions better than others. For instance, this was a variant of the “What did you just say?” face, which was very different from the “I cannot articulate how angry I am about what you just said” face, or the “Keep going I want to hear this” face that he tried very hard to aim for and usually failed.

“Valdes,” Elmira said, which was already an improvement on what he expected. She never used his first name. “Do you _want_ to marry me?”

“I would not be opposed?” Valdes tried, because he didn’t know what else to say. “The idea of marriage had never occurred to me.”

Elmira tilted her head, studying him carefully. “It would strengthen your claim to the throne over all other contenders.” A small smile tucked into the corner of her mouth. “Did you think about this at all before rushing over here?”

Valdes shook his head. His body felt numb, and his mouth even moreso.

“Tell me three reasons I should accept your proposal.”

“I don’t want you to die,” Valdes said, before his brain caught up to his mouth. He could feel heat rising on his cheeks, but Elmira’s face was a little pink too, so that was probably fine. “I want you to help me rule.”

“One more.” Elmira’s voice cracked.

Valdes braced himself solidly, hands on his cane so that he couldn’t shake, and said, “I think I might just love you.”

“You could have started with that one,” Elmira said softly, finally smiling. “It would have worked best.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes. Let’s make this happen.” Elmira stepped forward and placed her hand over his. Valdes’ body felt incandescent in that moment as her eyes met his. “I will marry you.”

“Oh,” Valdes said faintly. “That’s nice.”

“Sit down before you fall over,” Elmira said, dragging him over to a chair. “Now, I imagine this is going to serve as both a wedding and a coronation, so it’s going to take some planning…”

Valdes nodded, sat in the chair Elmira led him to, and let her words wash over him. He nodded in the right places, made noises like he was listening, but mostly his head was consumed with wonder that this could happen at all.


	4. Chapter 4

The wedding plans took longer than Valdes wanted.

He wasn’t even involved with most of the actual planning. His role, as best he could tell, was running interference for Elmira so that _she_ could coordinate with the castle’s staff to plan the wedding. 

This mostly involved getting into extended arguments with everyone else who had been involved in the coup. Or, more accurately, getting into the same argument at least twice daily, until the last vestiges of Valdes’ patience had been burnt away.

“This was _your idea_ ,” Valdes finally shouted, waving his hand at Lord Blythe. “Why suggest it, even in jest, if you hated the idea?”

Lord Blythe shook his head. “She has rejected every suitor for _seven years_ , Emmerson.”

“So you didn’t think she’d say yes?” Valdes snorted and stalked past him. There wasn’t any point to this argument anymore. “A pity. You can’t stop this from happening, Blythe.”

“Are you certain?”

Valdes laughed, giving Lord Blythe one final look before he walked away.

It wasn’t that he was _certain_ Lord Blythe couldn’t stop them; it was that Valdes was confident that Lord Blythe couldn’t come up with a plan that would stop them. The greater concern was what he would try to pull, and how much damage it would cause.

Fortunately, he wasn’t going to be dealing with that alone. Valdes went first to the captain of the guard—one of the few key members of the castle staff they had outright replaced—to ensure that mundane defenses wouldn’t be neglected. The captain listened to Valdes’ concerns, nodded, and then took Valdes to the central hall where the wedding would take place.

“The problem,” Captain Pelles said as he gestured at the hall, “is that everyone knows this location, and all the possible ways to sneak in. And we can’t change it without undermining even more tradition than you’re already doing.”

“Then what _can_ you do?”

Captain Pelles frowned as he looked around. “I can make sure that everyone on duty is sworn to the Princess.” At Valdes’ sigh, he bowed and said apologetically, “She inspires more loyalty than you do, for most of the men.”

“I know.” Valdes sighed. “So long as their loyalty to her extends to not accepting bribes to kill me, that’s acceptable.”

Captain Pelles bowed again, more deeply this time, and—wisely—didn’t respond.

From there, Valdes went to find Yven. Out of the entire council, Yven had been the only one who had just sighed and rolled his eyes upon hearing Valdes’ plan. Eye contact and a rueful smile had been enough to explain himself, and then Yven had mostly stayed out of the ensuing debates. Now, he contented himself with a single, “I told you so.”

“Which means you’ve already begun putting precautions in place.” Valdes smiled at Yven’s disgusted expression. “Do you need any help?”

Yven shoved him out of the room. “Your fiancée has everything under control. All you need to do is be the figurehead.”

“Fuck you,” Valdes muttered, but he let himself be pushed.

The next month was entirely about the preparations. Declarations were posted throughout the kingdom, and all Valdes could think was _The king is dead, long live the king_ , because the carefully-worded posters all centered on that idea. The coup had taken the king’s life, and those of his sons, but his daughter had appeared and come to an agreement with the dissidents.

Her marriage had been part of the deal struck to keep the kingdom intact, it said, which wasn’t precisely _wrong_ , even if it implied a very different angle than the truth. Valdes didn’t argue with it, because the announcements also minimized mention of the coup’s killings and completely removed all mention of Valdes’ role in the slaughter. He was simply “a young mage mutually agreed upon as suitable for this role by all parties involved,” which Valdes found irritating and Elmira found hilarious.

It was, if nothing else, an impressive act of propaganda.

It didn’t change that Valdes had to face the civilians’ opinions about him being a mage. Mages didn’t marry, and they _especially_ didn’t marry the crown princess—and soon to be queen—of the kingdom. Valdes listened to this in Tamarisk Castle’s open court, bored on the throne, and told all those who dared voice these opinions, “Laws change. Princess Elmira chose this. Do you have anything useful to say, or are you just here to shout?” He idly traced runes in the air while saying this; nothing immediately harmful, but carrying the threat of his power all the same.

Nobody argued after that, but Valdes still saw the looks they gave him. Fear, suspicion, resentment; if Lord Blythe was looking for people who were willing to wreak havoc, he would have plenty of commonfolk—and even some petty nobles!—champing at the bit to be given the resources necessary to do so.

Valdes sighed, and kept sitting on the throne, and tried to believe in the people around him. It was hard; he’d spent too long working with and for himself. Still, he had to try.

* * *

Elmira briskly shook out the wedding robes she had spent the last fortnight working on. One set for her, and one for Valdes, who had patiently listened to her explanations and helped her set her intentions into every stitch. Runes could be marked into everything, after all, and for an event as contentious as a wedding, they needed all the protection they could get.

“They aren’t precisely traditional,” she said, looking up at Valdes. “But since tradition wouldn’t allow our marriage to begin with, I don’t find this to be a problem.”

“I don’t know what the nontraditional elements even are.” Valdes stroked his robe; it was done in traditional gold-and-white, with geometric emerald-green embroidery to match both his eyes and his cane. “Explain them to me?”

Elmira smiled, then picked up the robe and began wrapping it around Valdes. “The designs should be about prosperity, and the kingdom, not spells worked into the fabric.” She draped the shawl over his shoulders. “This should be woven by my hands, at least in part, but I only worked the embroidery in.” Her fingers didn’t tremble as she picked up a simple coronet and set it on his forehead. “And, usually, you would have a title of your own already, and a crown or coronet to go with it, not something borrowed.”

Valdes lightly touched her cheek as she settled the coronet on his forehead, eyes dark and warm. Elmira paused, her own hands still resting on his hair. They had never been close, physically. Even after his marriage proposal, Valdes had kept a distance between them. This touch was one of the most intimate contacts brought between them, and Elmira felt her face warm and her heart speed up as his fingers stroked along her skin. “Thank you,” he said softly. “This was not necessary.”

“It was,” she said, and slowly brushed her own fingertips along the wave of his hair and down to his shoulder. “Perhaps not for you, but for me.”

He smiled again, unexpected and brilliant. “Do you think you’ll regret this?”

Elmira shook her head. She had made her choice, and she wouldn’t back down from it. “You need to dress me as well,” she said, instead of attempting to justify any of the feelings in her heart. Before Valdes could protest, Elmira stepped back to pick up the other set of robes and hand them to him.

They mirrored Valdes’ robes; gold where his were white, white where his were gold. The embroidery she’d stitched in was deep blue, floral to contrast the straight lines and angles of his. The runes could be hidden in either form, etched into the backstitching as clearly as the front. He took them reverently, and hesitantly slid each sleeve over her arms, moving so carefully Elmira almost wondered if he thought she’d break at his touch.

Elmira helped him, straightening her arms to collect the fabric. “The sash,” she murmured, turning to face him. There were other ways to do this, but she wanted to force him closer, and see his face as he looped the sash around her.

Valdes met her eyes and didn’t look away as he knotted the sash neatly around her waist. “Elmira,” he said, and her name slipped off his tongue like a prayer. She waited, his hands hot on the soft curves of her hips, uncertain what he was going to say. He watched her, and then shook his head in wonder and said only, “Thank you.”

Elmira leaned forward, because she finally thought she had a handle on how he felt, to kiss him. She’d aimed for his cheek, but he turned his head so that her lips landed on his instead. They were soft, moreso because of the barely-present burr of his clean-shaven skin.

Valdes pressed in close, his hands slipping around behind her and supporting her as he confidently took the lead in their kiss. Elmira clutched at him, heat rushing through her body at their contact and closeness. She wanted this to last forever, but it couldn’t last too long.

When Valdes pulled back, Elmira followed him, blinking slightly as she was forced to use her eyes again. “Why only now?” she asked, breath coming a little fast.

“I didn’t know if it would be welcome.” Valdes’ words were quick, and his hands still steady on her back. “But since it is—”

He kissed her again, harder and faster, and this time when he broke away Elmira let out a gasp.

Valdes laughed a little, and kissed her forehead lightly. “Come,” he said, stepping back and taking her hand. “Let’s show them what we can do.”

Elmira laced their fingers together and smiled as they walked out to their wedding.

Come what may, they’d hold their ground together, and the world would change to match them.


End file.
